Djibouti

by Elmore Leonard

  “Do you trust him?” Dara said.

  “Of course not. But what can he do? He has to get Jama’s name before he can go to the embassy and work his scheme.”

  Dara said, “And you want me to talk him out of it.”

  She glanced down the hall, the light dim, but recognized Jama coming along handcuffed, a Somali, apparently unarmed, close behind him. The Somali unlocked the first door they came to—three on each side of the hallway—pushed Jama inside and stepped in the room with him.

  “You see him?” Idris said. “That was Jama.”

  “I’ve talked to him before,” Dara said. “Why don’t I look in and say hi?”

  Idris said, “You want to go in their room?”

  “With Xavier,” Dara said.

  THE SOMALI’S NAME WAS Datuk Hossa.

  Jama sat in a chair made of stout wood with arms and a padded seat of cracked leather. He let Datuk cuff his right hand to the edge of the springs beneath the pad. He said, “Datuk, I am in your debt.”

  The Somali looked in his face for a moment before turning to Qasim on the cot, his shoulders sagging, his feet on the floor, his right hand cuffed to springs beneath the thin mattress. The Somali was at the door now, leaving. He looked back as Jama said, “Allah will bless you.”

  Jama watched him go out and waited until he heard the key turn in the lock.

  “He’ll do it for six hundred dollars.”

  “Out of fear,” Qasim said.

  “Scared to death of al Qaeda,” Jama said. “I told him it’s good to look scared. I’m holding a piece at your head as we walk out.”

  “How do you have a gun?”

  “Datuk has a semiautomatic holds eight loads. I told him that would be lovely, part of the show. Else why would they let us out? The other boys act suspicious, I told him give ’em each a C-note, you still get six hundred. They’re in it with you then, you and your associates.”

  Qasim said, “But we don’t have money to give them. He wants to see it, doesn’t he?”

  “I told him it’s hidden. If I show it too soon, I’m afraid one of the others might grab it and cut him out. Or you get in a fight over it and somebody gets shot. I said Allah told me not to show the money until we’re free.”

  Qasim said, “You trust Datuk?”

  Jama said, “He’s the one can open doors.”

  In the same moment he straightened and looked toward the door, the sound of a key turning in the lock.

  THEY CAME IN THE room, Xavier’s gaze holding on Jama, Dara asking the terrorists how they were doing. She said to Jama, “I hear your price has been raised to twenty-five million. Did you know that?”

  Xavier watched him with his beard and long hair, no kinks in it, sitting there like he was making up his mind.

  He said to Dara, “You think I’m worth it?”

  Dara said, “Ari the Sheikh does.”

  Xavier said, “I can’t see this street kid goin for as much as the higher-ups. Somebody’s made a name for himself like Ayman al Zawahiri.”

  “You’re right,” Dara said. “Mullah Omar’s big, but he’s only worth ten million. And I believe Baitullah Mehsud.”

  “Baitullah’s gone to heaven,” Xavier said, “taken out by Hellfire missile in Pakistan. Had CIA’s name on it.”

  “What about the guy,” Dara said, “who planned the suicide run on the USS Cole? I can’t think of his name.”

  “If I may,” Jama said, “Fahd Mohammed Ahmed al Quso, but he’s worth only five mil.”

  “Thank you,” Dara said and looked at Xavier. “I guess bin Laden and Zawahiri are the only ones going for twenty-five.”

  “Unless this boy qualifies,” Xavier said.

  Dara thought about it. “What’s he done?”

  Xavier shook his head. “Nothin I know of.”

  “Harry’s a sly one,” Dara said. “He must have a scheme to up this guy’s price. Get as much as he can and move to London.”

  Jama said, “That’s where he’s going? You’re right, I detect a love of Blighty in the man’s speech. What about the other one, Idris? Where’s he going with his dough?”

  “He’s leaning toward Paris,” Dara said.

  Jama, nodding his head, said, “They happen to be gone when I leave here, I’ll know where to find them.”

  A FEW MINUTES LATER in the hall Dara said, “He was telling us he plans to escape. Confident about it. Isn’t that what he was saying?”

  “I thought you’d ask how he thinks he’s gonna do it,” Xavier said. “All you told him was ‘Yeah, right.’”

  “He’ll never find those guys,” Dara said.

  “Yeah, but he’s thinkin about it.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  ONCE THE WOMAN AND her servant were out of the room Qasim said, “You tell them you’re going to escape?”

  “Both of us,” Jama said. “What can she and her nigga do about it, tell Idris? He knows it’s all we think about. It’s what we do we’re locked up. You been in the slam. You forget what it’s like? How bad you want to get out?”

  “I can’t think of doing life,” Qasim said.

  “We get out you can do what you want. You tired of this shit, make a run with a suicide bomb.”

  What Jama was tired of was Qasim.

  “Coming here from Eyl,” Qasim said, “I was thinking of a way to kill myself so I don’t go to prison. Idris Mohammed would speak to me, I don’t say a word to him. The other one, the sheikh they call Harry, he’s with me in the car at night. He says he will allow me to escape if I tell him your Christian name. I ask him how I would escape. He says we think of a way and he watches me walk off.”

  Jama said, “You told him my name?”

  “I thought at first you and I are going to prison for life. What difference is it they know you are Jimmy Russell?”

  “Russell,” Jama said, looking down at Qasim on the cot. “You remember it all these years? I said my name only once that time, seven years ago, and never said it again I’m over here.”

  Jama paused to think for a moment and grinned. “I did mention it to a chick at the Café Las Vegas, right here in Djibouti, but she don’t speak any English. I give her euros and cigarettes for the best two days of fucking I ever had in my life. A Ethiopian chick name Celeste Tamene. Twenty years old, man, she was a panther. So I commit her name to my memory.”

  “I like an Ethiopian girl,” Qasim said, “now and then.”

  “All those years you remember Jimmy Russell, uh? Only I was never Jimmy, I was James. Which name did you tell him?”

  “Listen to me,” Qasim said, worming his body around on the cot to look up at Jama in the stout chair. “I did not tell Harry your name. As Allah hears me, I will take it to my grave.”

  “I believe it,” Jama said. “You have never said my name to anyone, James or Jimmy. Is that right?”

  “You tell me your secrets,” Qasim said, “I keep them here, in my head.”

  “What secrets you talking about?”

  “Things you have told me of your life, your time in prison. Things we do when we are together and can be ourselves.”

  Jama said, “You never talk about any of that, do you?”

  “Of course not, it’s a private part of us.”

  A private part of all these guys who don’t treat their women like women, but hide them.

  Jama thinking again of the girl at the Las Vegas:

  How she liked to fool around with him while she was dancing. Get behind one of the cement pillars on the dance floor and come out shaking her ass at him. Come over close to him and wink and flutter her tongue. Man. He’d get a good whiff of her perfume and want to jump her. It was a while ago, but he remembered her name, ’cause in the Toyota coming here, Idris Mohammed talking—Idris telling him things he’d never have again in prison for life—Idris said her name and he remembered it, Celeste, and his time with her, while Idris was telling him about this girl he saw every month.

  “For how long?”

  �
��A night or a few days. I relax with Celeste and tell her about hijacking ships. She loves to listen to me. I have a doctor inspect her before I arrive. I don’t want any of that HIV/AIDS contaminating me. Celeste is always clean, twenty years old, a flower waiting for a good plucking. I pay her enough she doesn’t have to sell her body. But she loves to dance at the club with her friends, the Las Vegas.”

  In the Toyota on the way to Djibouti, Jama said to Idris, “She loves to fuck too. Celeste Tamene? Lives on rue de Bir Hakeim?” You bet it was the same one. In that moment Idris was stopped dead, he couldn’t speak, and Jama said, “Yeah, I had her. I thought she wasn’t bad.”

  QASIM WAS LOOKING AT the light coming through the shutters.

  “Time to put on my shoes. He’ll be here soon. Datuk?”

  Jama said, “What’s the other one’s name up here?” He waited and said, “Ibrahim. You remember it?”

  “It’s of no interest to me,” Qasim said, bent over now to tie his shoes. “You have yours on?”

  “Always,” Jama said. “You never noticed?”

  “You’re telling me you never take off your shoes?”

  “Only when I sleep. It’s where I keep my passport.”

  Qasim straightened, sitting up.

  “They don’t look in your shoes?”

  “You don’t see anything. The passport’s between the inside of the shoe and the sole, always there all the time. You know why?” Jama said, “Give me scissors and a straight razor,” touching his beard. “I can clear off the foliage and be the cool-looking kid in the passport again.”

  “They have your fingerprints?”

  “Where? You mean in America? Who knows I was ever in prison? Over here I got a Djibouti passport, I’m Jama the khat-seller. I have my real self put away for when it’s time to leave.”

  “You tell me more about who you are,” Qasim said, “than I ever knew before, in years together.”

  “You know my name,” Jama said, “you know everything about me.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Qasim said, “but it’s time.”

  “For what?”

  “To give you a phone number. You will remember it?”

  “Is Allah God?”

  “The number is 44-208-748-1599.”

  “Whose number is it?”

  “The explosives aboard Aphrodite.”

  DATUK CAME IN WITH their supper, a tin bowl in each hand, and passed behind Jama’s chair to place them on a card table. He brought two spoons and a saltshaker from under the shirt hanging to his knees.

  “Nothing else?” Jama said.

  Datuk said, “Wait,” and walked out of the room. In a few minutes he was back with coffee in tin cups and placed them on the table. Now he brought a Walther from under his shirt, smoothed the shirt over his hips and placed the gun on the table.

  “You pay me now?”

  “As soon as we leave,” Jama said, “all right? I have the money in my shoe.”

  Datuk unlocked him and went to Qasim as Jama picked up the Walther and said, “This is my gun,” surprised, “I can tell by the scratches on it.” He released the magazine, saw it was loaded and shoved it back in the grip. He couldn’t believe it, the same gun he’d lifted from the shop in 2003. Man, his own gun given back to him.

  “We should eat this before we leave,” Qasim said in English. “We don’t know when we will have food again.”

  Cold spaghetti in tomato juice; no camel this evening.

  Jama said, “Are you fucking serious?” He paused, looking at Qasim’s eyes, and saw a faint glimpse of hope in his stare. It wasn’t food he wanted but time, some more of it.

  How did he know it was coming to an end?

  He said to Qasim, “Eat if you want,” and told Datuk to call Ibrahim.

  THEY WENT DOWN THE stairway, Datuk first, Jama with a hand on his shoulder, the other hand pressing the Walther into his back. Ibrahim had banged through the door to the room. Qasim has his AK now, the four of them going down the stairs.

  The sitting room was empty, and the dining room with its formal table painted green. Jama motioned Datuk down the hall to the open doorway into the kitchen. Past Datuk’s shoulder Jama saw the two downstairs guards at the kitchen table eating what looked like lamb with peppers and beans. He caught the scent of their meal and swallowed. He pushed Datuk into the kitchen and saw the guard sitting at the end of the table look up. Now the other one was looking this way. They could see who had the guns.

  Jama said to them, “Where is my friend Idris?”

  The one at the end of the table said, “They left, both of them. But they coming back very soon. They should walk in at any moment.”

  “It’s time for tea,” Qasim said. “They will be gone two hours or more.”

  Jama looked at him.

  “It’s who they are,” Qasim said, “being gentlemen.”

  The man sounding like himself again, knowing what was going on: at Riyadh telling him about Americans running the Saudi companies, telling him to find them and shoot them. Qasim cool in those days.

  The one at the end pushed up from the table and spread out his arms. He said in Arabic, “I am not armed, our weapons are over there. You want to escape? Please, go ahead.”

  The kitchen table was no more than twenty feet from Jama. He moved to Datuk’s side raising the Walther and shot the one standing at the end of the table. Jama put the Walther on the other one, still seated, staring at him, and told himself no, turned the Walther on Datuk raising his arm in defense and shot him through the heart. Now the one at the table—but Ibrahim was taking the AK from Qasim, twisting it from his hands, and Jama shot him in the face, turned to the guard who was finally up from the table and shot him as he started to run. He turned to Qasim now holding the AK. Qasim watching him. He said, “You don’t have to do it.”

  Jama said, “You know my name.”

  “I have always known it.”

  “But it’s different now.” Jama wasn’t sure what the difference was but could feel it looking at Qasim. He raised the Walther. Qasim turned his head and Jama shot him where you would shoot yourself if you saw it was that time, in the temple.

  He still had three rounds. Two for Harry and Idris.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  HARRY HAD FINISHED SEVERAL gins by the time Idris caught up with him in an African market that stocked canned goods and olive oil and—what do you know—khat, left over from yesterday. Harry sipping and chewing in a pleasant frame of mind, said the khat had lost much of its potency, somewhat dry but it still wasn’t bad.

  “Have a chew.”

  Idris said, “There is no sense in arguing with you, is there?”

  “None,” Harry said. “What’s bothering you?”

  “You leave people worth millions of dollars in the care of boys.”

  “No,” Harry said, “you did. They were securely handcuffed when I left. Were they still handcuffed when you left? Were they eating their spaghetti like good boys? Tell me,” Harry said, “what would you do if they tried to escape while you were in the house?”

  “How could they?”

  “But say they did.”

  “If I had to, I’d shoot them,” Idris said. “You would too, you’d have no choice.”

  “Very possibly,” Harry said, “and it would break my heart.”

  Idris said, “Giving up all that money.”

  He had a gin and in a while they became tired of talking, wondering, Harry feeling like himself again, somewhat buzzed—the first time since leaving Eyl. He was thinking he might be a bit stoned and high at the same time. No, the confident feeling would be the work of the gin. The khat made you think of pleasant moments you might experience, but never urged you to make them happen.

  They walked back to the fading town house on the African street and stood a moment before Idris said, “Oh, I have a key. I forgot.” He looked at his ring of keys, reached in his pocket and brought out the door key.

  Harry said, “Are you going to stare at
the fucking key? You had only one drink.”

  “Two,” Idris said. “But I haven’t eaten today.” Idris slipped the key into the keyhole and said, “It’s not locked,” and turned the knob and pushed the door open.

  Harry brushed past him, the PPK in his hand, the one he had used on the first officer in Idris’s garage, Idris remembering how surprised he was when Harry shot the young man, but not surprised now by his behavior. He followed Harry to the staircase expecting him to call out, see who was here.

  “Datuk, where the devil are you?” Not loud. Harry still with some control. He looked up the staircase now to tell Datuk, “You left the fucking door open. Is everything,” Harry said, “as it should be?”

  Idris motioned to him and Harry followed along the hall to the kitchen. Idris stopped in the doorway. Harry looked in past him to see Qasim—with absolute certainty their five-million-dollar reward—lying dead on the floor, the four Somalis lying about, and their twenty-five-million-dollar chance of a lifetime nowhere, gone.

  “I’m not going to scold you,” Harry said to Idris, “for leaving the house.”

  “You left too,” Idris said.

  “Yes, but the main thing is Jama’s loose. It’s no one’s fault but the Somalis, the buggers were just not up to it.” Harry said, “I suppose I could call the embassy, see if they’ll take Qasim as is. They could stuff him, glue his eyes open and photograph him.”

  Idris said, “You want to carry him down the street?”

  “We’ll call the embassy, have him picked up. That fucking Qasim…At least, thank Allah, we still have Jama.”

  “Where?” Idris said, “I don’t see him.”

  “You don’t suppose,” Harry said, “he’s still here. Let’s take a look,” and started up the stairway with his pistol.

  Idris called, “Harry,” loud enough to stop him. “What are you doing? The man killed five people. He’s gone.”